I meant to post this earlier, but stuff kept happening. I had a hard time getting people to sign up via WordPress, so this site has moved to Blogger.

The url www.independentbloggers.org will take you there.

CLICK IMAGE FOR MORE

From the Stop Big Media blog, Columbus Speaks Out Against Consolidation:

Nearly 400 people packed into the Broad Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio Wednesday night to testify for more than four hours about the threat of sweeping changes to the nation’s media ownership rules.

“I’m ready to play offense,” said Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps. “So let’s talk this evening about more than just preventing bad new rules, but about revisiting the bad old rules that got us into this mess in the first place. Let’s talk about actually bringing back positive public interest obligations to our broadcast media.”

Click here for the rest.

Via The News Blog:
Update on Gilly: Not out of the woods yet

Gilly will be under sedation at least through the weekend. Why? Well, the surgery was more delicate than they thought, and they are afraid to put any pressure on his chest–so they didn’t close it. So now, he’s pretty much in sterile, suspended storage with an open chest cavity (something else covering the wound I suppose) until they can check his healing and stitch him up. They hope to close him up by Monday the latest.

What he had done: Gilly’s Mom was too distraught to really get the details. Apparently they did wind up doing the bypass in the end, but she’s still not sure if they did the valve repair or replacement (and if a replacement, if he got a xeno or a Jarvis part).

Click here for the rest, and to post a comment with your prayers and best wishes

Via skippy, blogger Steve Gilliard is out of surgery. Light a virtual candle for Steve’s speedy recovery here.

Via Yahoo News

By an overwhelming voice vote, Middlebury called for impeachment.

So it has gone this week at town meetings across Vermont, most of which were held Tuesday.

Late Tuesday night, there were confirmed reports that 36 towns had backed impeachment resolutions, and the number was expected to rise.

Click here for the rest.

I finally got the importer to work, and have been able to import posts from the mirror site. But they all show up as being by me. When I get a chance, I’ll have to go in and add a byline to those posts, to make it clearer which ones are by another author. No time to do that now, so I’m just giving a heads-up.

P.S. If you haven’t done so yet, adding a link to www.independentbloggers.org to your blogroll would be much appreciated. And if already added us and you’re not on our blogroll yet, just let me know, and I’ll take care of that as soon as possible.

It’s not that I wish I were home all day to be able to write something brilliant when Big News Breaks, because that would mean that I was unemployed. And if it’s a choice between designing return address logos and reformatting user and design specifications or being home to blog but living in constant gnawing fear about being able to pay the bills, well, that’s a no-brainer.

But still, when I see the big GUILTY show up and I can’t write about it, it’s frustrating as hell.

I’m not under any delusions that the conviction of Scooter Libby on four out of five counts (which came as a surprise to me, given how long the jury was out and the Administration’s track record of strongarming the justice system) means a hill of beans. Far from being chastened, the Usual Suspects not only don’t care about the unholy marriage of this Administration and its lackeys in the mainstream media that were revealed during this trial, they are sticking to their own delusions that Joseph Wilson is a liar, that Valerie Plame was not NOC, and perhaps the couple’s biggest crime — that they are Democrats.

As to whether Libby will ever spend a day in jail, well, it’s a certainty that he’ll be pardoned, despite the limp and pathetic entreaties of Harry Reid.

Meanwhile, the fact that the Iraq war was based on total fabrications, the fact that the worst kind of lies were told by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, will continue to go unpunished. The Bush/Cheney legacy will be a dark one, to be sure, but one without consequences. Patrick Fitzgerald has said that he is done, that he is not going to go after Cheney. And perhaps this is the correct decision, if Cheney has covered his tracks sufficiently well so that conviction is impossible. As to the political ramifications, they are unimportant where Dick Cheney is concerned, especially if you assume that this bunch will leave office in 2009 — something of which I am not yet convinced. Cheney isn’t going to run for president. In theory his years in power will be over, unless some future Republican president loses his mind — or more likely, the public loses its memory — and decides his “experience” is an asset. Perhaps this is the reason for shoveling such huge amounts of cash into Halliburton’s coffers from so many projects, not just the Iraq war — it’s Dick Cheney’s retirement plan.

So while it’s tempting to rejoice at the idea that someone in the Bush Administration is actually going to have to accept some consequences for the lies and corruption that are this bunch’s hallmark, the reality is that the only person who may suffer consequences is Tim Russert, who is likely to find himself outside in the cold, his nose pressed against the window, where access to this administration is concerned.

(cross-posted at Brilliant at Breakfast)

Just spotted this diary at My Left Wing.

My Left Wing Earns High Praise

…CJ emailed me today to let me know that My Left Wing had caught the eye of Cyrano’s Journal Online and wanted to tell me how much appreciation there was thereabouts for MLW.
…
Featured Writers of CJO:

Gore Vidal (Emeritus), Noam Chomsky, Alex Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Michael Parenti, Glen Ford, Edward Herman, Stephen Gowans, Ernest Stewart, John Steppling, Guy Zimmerman, Jason Miller, James Petras , Sheila Samples, Robert Parry, Phil Rockstroh, Bruce Dixon, Danny Schechter, Ilan Pappe, Carolyn Baker, Slavoj Zizek, Margaret Kimberley, Stephen Lendman Charles Sullivan

Click to read all the nice things they have to say about My Left Wing. Very cool.

Religion amazes me. In nothing else are so many so sure with so little basis. In fact, the very heart of religion, when you come right down to it, is “believe me without any reason at all, or you lack faith.”

But what if they’re wrong? What if God is not a magician, a flinger of lightning, bringer of pestilence and plagues? What if he didn’t just make everything magically appear? What if, instead, what we call “God,” little more than a word meaning “stuff we don’t yet understand,” is really just as reasoned and logical, as observable and testable, as everything else in the world?

What if “God” is a scientist, rather than a magician? Does that really take away from the glory of all the universe? To paraphrase Shakespeare:

Hath not a Universe stars? hath not a Universe planets, galaxies, quasars, nebulae, comets, asteroids? fed with the same nuclear reactions, hurt with the same pollution, subject to the same analysis, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same reactions and rotations, as a God is? If you observe it, does it not change? if you explore it, do you not learn? if you poison it, do we all not die? and if you wrong it, shall it not adjust? If it is like God in the rest, it will resemble God in that.